April 12, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



351 



then, after two or three generations, has lost all 

 knowledge of the matings that have gone before. 

 Of course, the race has got along, somehow, just 

 as the lower animals get along; although we have 

 been burdened with an intelligence sufficient to 

 lead us to interferenoe with the operation of pure 

 instinct but not sufficient always to interfere 

 wisely. 



He instances especially, as indicating 

 that the nature of the mating influences 

 the progenj-, the study of half fi-aternities, 

 and mentions especially the case of a man 

 born in 1668, a graduate of Harvard, whose 

 wife was the sister of the first rector of Yale 

 College, who entered the ministry and 

 preached in southeastern Connecticut. His 

 first wife was apparently a quiet, steady, 

 religious woman of no apparent wealth or 

 culture. Her children were farmers, and 

 received no special education. His second 

 wife belonged to a wealthy New York fam- 

 ily, of high social standing and culture, and 

 the children by this wife were educated at 

 Yale College and became prominent in the 

 affairs of the nation. The thought that 

 occurs to almost any one in studying this 

 case is that the wealth acquired by the sec- 

 ond marriage enabled the superior educa- 

 tion of the children which it produced, 

 and that obviously education and environ- 

 ment brought about a very considerable 

 contrast between the children of the two 

 wives. 



The whole paper, however, is a sound and 

 striking argument showing the value of 

 scientific human genealogy, a proposition, 

 however, which most of us are ready to ac- 

 cept without any extended argument. The 

 paper as a whole touches upon a single 

 aspect of the main subject of the sym- 

 posium, and this aspect in itself has only 

 been thought of as zoological of late. 



The final contribution to the sj'mposium 

 was on the value of museums, by Dr. Henry 

 Fairfield Osborn. This too is a rather self- 



evident proposition. The address has not 

 been published, but it is certain that the 

 zoological work of the museums was more 

 than competently handled. Dr. Osborn, as 

 every one knows, entirely aside from his 

 eminent standing as a paleontologist, is an 

 expert in museum management, and has 

 published many papers on the subject. 



The sjTnposium of 1914-15, as a whole, 

 as pointing out in a comprehensive way the 

 value of zoology to humanity, is very dis- 

 appointing and by no means does justice to 

 the subject. In fact, it touches on only 

 four aspects of the topic and these by no 

 means of the first importance ; and, more- 

 over, in one of the papers it confuses zool- 

 ogy with general biology if not scientific 

 thought as a whole. 



No one denies the abilities of the speak- 

 ers, who were, and are in fact, four of the 

 most prominent among the American work- 

 ers in zoologj", and any one of them, if 

 given the whole field, would doubtless have 

 made a magnificent showing. To each, how- 

 ever, was assigned a subtitle, and thus the 

 value of zoology to humanity received a 

 most unsatisfactory treatment. One promi- 

 nent worker in zoologj' as applied to medi- 

 cine, I am told, left the meeting undecided 

 whether to relieve himself by jeers or by 

 tears, and it was at his suggestion that the 

 present supplementary sjonposium has been 

 arranged. Mind you, this one will not be 

 sufficient unto itself, since each speaker is 

 assigned one general topic, but if it prop- 

 erly supplements the other it ought to out- 

 weigh it in proportion of anywhere from 

 ten to one hundred to one. 



And now let us see what those zoologists 

 who study insects have done and are doing 

 for the welfare of humanity. The class 

 Insecta includes a host of species which are 

 most keenly competing with the human 

 species in the struggle for existence. The 



